Japan’s Largest Bank to Launch Blockchain Payments Network

Japan’s Largest Bank to Launch Blockchain Payments Network

Japan’s biggest financial group and world’s fifth largest bank by assets, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), will be launching a blockchain-based payments network in 2020. The firm formed a joint venture with fintech firm Akamai Technologies to develop the platform “by the first half of 2020,” according to its Tuesday announcement.

The system, which will be called the Global Open Network, will be able to process over a million transactions per second, as MUFG claims. The firms are also discussing the addition of “internet of things” (IoT) and Akamai’s cloud computing platform into the network.

Coindesk reports that the planned network was originally announced in May 2018, in which Akamai claimed that the network will feature a variety of services, including current payment processing, pay-per-use, micropayments and “other developing IoT-enabled payment transactions.”

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group had been previously looking into blockchain tech for several user cases. In fact, the firm had partaken in a pilot back in November that put a syndicated loan for $150 million on the blockchain, along with BBVA and France’s BNP Paribas.

Prior to that, in December 2017, the group introduced a blockchain proof-of-concept with tech firm NTT, in hopes of improving cross-border trades. In addition, the firm was seeking to develop its own digital currency back in 2016, named MUFG coin, as part of its research into blockchain.

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